Slackin' Online for all to see

Archive for June, 2007

I’ve just added some new pictures to the image gallery. They are shots from a local softball team the Saints. They are, for the most part, taken during the evening and night ‘under the lights’ at the field. I’m a bit disapointed with them as it’s very tough to lock motion in such low light with my amateur lenses. It’s been a lot of fun trying though and every once in a while I manage to get something worth keeping.

I have not edited the images posted and I have only deleted the ones that were totally blurry or lacking a subject, everything else has been posted. Let me know what you think.

I’ve been making some changes to the site over the past few days. The most obvious one is that I have setup the front page to only show a few lines of each post and to include a link to the rest of the post. Should make the front page a little easier on the eyes as well as the scroll wheel.

I have added a Who Are We? page to offer a bit of information about the authors on this site as well as a my motivation for posting. As of today CodeC11b has not added to that page though I hope he will shortly. I have also updated the Server Configuration page for all those interested in that sort of thing. Read more...(228 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

It seems that I have in the past spoken about how I’m not a fan of Dell computers. I used to be, who doesn’t like a cheap PC? I encouraged my mom to buy one, as well as my sister and both of those machines are running great. I used to have plenty of love for Dell and I used to tell people to buy them all the time but lately in the absence of Michael Dell (who has recently been brought back into the company) Dell made some choices and cut some corners I just cannot stand behind. Case in point: My moms dell, the last one I have recommended someone buy, came out of the box with spyware installed on the system. I practically fell of the chair when I saw that. Read more...(627 words, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)

Well, I have a much needed vacation coming up towards the end of summer and I am already thinking about all of the items I want to make sure I have. It was last years vacation that got me inspired to starting taking more photos and this year I want to make sure I have plenty of toys to dabble with.

I of course have my Nikon D40 with it’s 18-50mm kit lens, and my 70-300mm VR lens but I have also added a few more items. The first is a wireless remote to be able to take pictures with out touching the camera. Sure, this may sound lazy but it’s also going to make getting certain types of shots much simpler. For instance, what if, for some reason, I want to be in the shot? Also, when you want to do a long exposer it’s best to mount the camera on something and not touch it. Even pressing the shutter release will move the camera some amount and when you are zoomed into something a millimeter at the camera is inches on the shot. Once I get the camera setup I can do 30 second or longer low light shots and sun rise/sunset shots that I have never been able to get the way I’d like. Assuming I can get up early enough in the AM I may be able to get some killer sun rise shots looking out across the ocean. Read more...(784 words, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)

I’m an amateur photographer, which I’m sure is obvious. I’m a guy in my mid-twenties that ‘discovered the joy of photography’ only about a year ago. A few months back I bought my first DSLR, the Nikon D40, and I’m very happy with it. I’ve had very good luck with the kit lens but found myself looking for a longer zoom. I’m not one to get a shot from where I’m standing in lieu of walking closer to the subject but there are times when that isn’t possible; A body or water may come in the way, or 60 rows of people in an auditorium, sometimes grabbing the zoom lens is the only way to get what I’m looking for. With that in mind I went on the hunt for a decent zoom for my camera. What I found was the 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor. Read more...(915 words, estimated 3:40 mins reading time)

Well, I bought this Macbook a while ago now and I thought it might be nice to give it a solid review after using it for so long. Everyone loves hardware they but when they buy.. but what happens months down the road?

For me? I love it and I love it more every time I use it. Heh, I know, it sounds stupid but it’s true oddly enough. Lets start with the hardware that seems to be causing someone out there so much trouble… My Laptop has been running on my desk for 6 hours and it’s about 75 degrees Fahrenheit in my office, my current CPU temp is 46 degrees Celsius and I can’t hear my fan at all. It runs very cool all of the time. When it’s 90 here in New Hampshire and I don’t want any extra heat hitting my lap I break out a piece of plywood or a small laptop board I picked up al Wal-Mart to create a barrier but 90% of the time I put it on my laptop to no ill effect. Read more...(1342 words, estimated 5:22 mins reading time)